


eaten up with something

by phantomphaeton



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 12:05:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20907392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantomphaeton/pseuds/phantomphaeton
Summary: Men are either eaten up with arrogance or stupidity. If they are amiable, it is because they are so easily led that they have no minds of their own.-Elizabeth BennetFed up with the unending misery of fighting for her right to be heard, Sansa leaves the great game behind and settles herself upon the shores of a distant city. With all of the determination and stupidity that got them all into this mess, Jon comes barreling after her.





	eaten up with something

**Author's Note:**

> I've been a Jonsa lurker for years now and posted this at the behest of one of my favorite Jonsa writers, Janina. Enjoy the show.

If she's said it once, she's said it a thousand times: men are fucking stupid.

It’s a very slow-growing realization, but she's acknowledged it in some way or another over the years. From the day she knew she would rather die than marry Joffrey, to the day she held the scroll in her fingers with _his_ messy scrawl telling her—with no helpful details—about how her home and her safety were now in the hands of a queen she know about as well as she knows a Yitish count with a pet cockroach (she doesn't, by the way).

She's always known. How much faith has she ever really been able to put in them? Not much. They tend to disappoint in some way or another. Robb, for all that he was skilled with armies, died because he made a stupid mistake. Father did too—and that does _not_ taste good coming out. She tried to tell him.

‘_I love them, and I miss them, but they made stupid mistakes_.’

She can appreciate stupidity now and again. If nothing else, it’s entertaining. But when that stupidity gets people killed—or throws away something people got killed for—then it isn’t funny anymore.

‘_Winterfell is yours, Your Grace._’

Men are so fucking stupid.

_Thank the Gods_, she thinks as she walks along the beach, sand clinging to her feet as she clutches the skirts of her gown to keep it from soaking in the salty water. And there’s plenty to be thankful for. She's decided, after the wars and the politics and the beatings and the knives and the men and their bumbling stupidity, that she's had quite enough of wars and politics and beatings and knives and men and their bumbling stupidity. While that conceited silver haired thing sits on that hideous chair—and while she dares to call herself her queen—there doesn’t seem to her to be any reason to remain in Winterfell—or as she's rechristened it, Winterhell. In fact, the more she thought on it, the less reason there seemed to be to even stay in Westeros.

_Better free abroad than a slave at home_.

Men are fucking stupid.

Pentos isn’t so bad. Really. There’s beaches and sunshine and lemons. So many lemons. She's a lovely home with a view of the sea, and Lord Manderly’s granddaughter Willa helps her pick flowers every afternoon and weave garlands and she can do nothing all day but stitch and sew. She's made so many pretty dresses she can’t even count them all. She walks along the shore every morning and every night, and she doesn’t think of Westeros at all. She doesn’t think of silver haired Dany, pretty as a picture, sitting herself upon that ugly old chair with that self-satisfied smirk on her face as she feeds her dragons a baby or two or twelve while receiving adoring stares from—

Ugh.

_Really_.

Men are just _stupid_.

Never_mind_ what had to happen to get it all back. Never_mind_ how hard Sansa worked, how much she risked. It doesn’t bother her.

Really.

It doesn’t seem too bad a trade. Four years in captivity in King’s Landing, for one glorious year safely in Winterfell before it was given away again. One single, glorious year before he brought the new queen to their gates and she was forced to hand it all over like it wasn’t even hers, like she was keeping it warm for someone else. She doesn’t care. Really. She eats lemon cakes everyday, and it’s starting to show. She runs along the beaches and collects shells, she stitches dresses and she weaves garlands and she doesn’t care, she doesn’t care, she doesn’t care. It’s a minor consolation, surely, that she left before anyone could come pounding on her door, demanding she bends a knee. As if she'd ever. Maybe he knows that. Maybe he knows she’d rather burn. Maybe that’s why he never tried to find her.

Not that she wants him to. Or anything. Why would she? Men are stupid pigs, and _he_ in particular seems to be a warthog.

It’s easier this way. Much, much easier. Lord and Lady Manderly manage Winterfell on her behalf, and she stays here in Pentos with Willa procuring assets and resources for the North. It works. She doesn’t have to bend the knee to that ray of <strike>pitch fucking black</strike> sunshine, and she can’t exactly come after her because Pentos is beyond her jurisdiction, and there’s no one in the world aside from a handful of people who can actually prove that Sansa Stark is running the North from a beachside villa in the Free Cities.

She must admit it does put a smile on her face some nights when she's finding it hard to fall asleep. Well—most nights she finds it hard to fall asleep—but on nights when it’s less awful than others, she likes to picture his face. Who told him that she was gone? How long did it take him to realize she wasn’t coming back? How long did it take him to realize why? _Did_ he ever realize why?

She never left a note. She's still smug about that. And it helps to think that maybe, somehow, it might have gnawed at him a little. He never liked feeling like he let someone down, and this was the best way to serve the double purpose of keeping herself safe and _free_ and also letting him know that he _seriously_ let her down.

She wonders if it hurt him. She wonders if it still hurts him. She hopes that it does. She hopes it hurts him as badly as it hurt her.

_She’ll be a good queen_.

How do you know? What have you seen of her governing that could convince you she’d be a good queen? What’s her tax policy? Her dormant military status quo? Her foreign imports plans?

_What about the North?_

Men are fucking stupid.

Ghost, at least, has found some level of calm. He spends his days dozing under the shade of the trees and his nights watching the waves kiss the shoreline. Maybe he’s at peace at last, with no clanging of metal or battles to fight. He’s missing an ear and he’s scarred down half his body now. The locals call him a demon. She doesn’t care what they say, and neither does he. They’re too scared to go near him, and he and her both like it that way. She would have left him in Winterhell, but she didn’t have the heart to abandon him where they’d treat him like an animal instead of loving him the way he ought to be. She can love him enough for all of Winterhell—she already does.

Yurio Tapis comes around twice a week with deliveries. Fabric, usually, and beads and gems for embellishment. Izarro goes to market four times a week. Willa heads into the city almost daily. Varo comes around every few weeks with letters from Lord Manderly, stays a day or two for her to pen her response, and then heads back North. She and Ghost rarely leave the residence.

She couldn’t tell you what’s become of Bran. If he’s still haunting the halls at Winterhell (where else could he go?) or if he’s holed himself up in his room, tired of creeping people out with his weird gazing. Might be he’s been bludgeoned to death by someone who is sick and fucking tired of his odd and eerily unsettling observations. Not likely. He knows where she is, she's sure. If asked, would he tell anyone where she is? Well, it’s been six months and no one’s bothered her yet.

Her farewell to him had been verbal, and (she's ashamed to say) teary. She was as erratic and irrational as she's allowed herself to be in many years, clutching the most recent treason in her hands.

“You’re leaving,” Bran had said. A statement, not a question. She nearly killed him.

“Jon’s sent this,” she said, holding it up. “From King’s Landing. Daenerys Targaryen sits upon the Iron Throne. Jon’s been named Prince of Dragonstone. She wants me to ride south to King’s Landing to pledge to her so she’ll officially name me Warden of the North.”

“And you’re leaving.”

“I—I have to. I told him—I _told_ him—I swore I’d never kneel to that bloody chair again, I don’t care who sits on it!”

She prided myself on not having very many emotional outbursts before that day—or since for that matter—but it was a necessary one. Bran was the safest person to be telling it to anyhow. It’s not as though there was anything he didn’t already know.

It didn’t seem like there was any other choice. Daenerys Targaryen knew—probably the moment they met—that Sansa had more clout than _he_ ever did. She knew who needed to be seen kneeling to bring the North into her grasp for realsies, not whatever promises _he_ whispered to her after their tumble in the sack. Critical thinking, tbh. Sansa's bet is that Tyrion suggested it. He did promise her she'd be the one holding the reins once this was all over.

But she doesn’t just want the reins. She wants the carriage and the horse, too. She's always been an all-or-nothing bitch. And _him_? He’s always been a stupid bitch. She's been betrayed since she was old enough to spell the word, but betrayal from him was new. Because he was there, watching her with the snowflakes all around him on a cold day in the courtyard of a sad, dreary castle. He was there, pounding Ramsay’s face into a pulp. He was there, giving her the North. And then he was beside Daenerys, and it all came crashing down.

_Men are either eaten up with arrogance or stupidity, and if they are amiable, they are so easily led that they have no minds of their own. _

Men are fucking stupid. Lust or greed or hubris or stupidity, no matter what the inclination may be, men are all eaten up with something.

Stupid fools. She's done with the lot of them. She packed a satchel full of coins and took Ghost and a horse and she only looked over her shoulder once or twice. She had to move quickly. If she didn’t reply within a week, odds were that Queen Dangerous Tyrannical would send someone to fetch her. And odds were even higher that she wouldn’t like how they did the fetching.

Hypocrite. Calls herself the Breaker of Chains but she only cares about people when they’re on their knees in front of her.

Stupid men. Can’t trust nary a one of them.

Ghost likes to sleep by the balcony doors. At night, it’s always windy, as cold as it’ll ever get in this part of the world, and the ocean breeze is a welcome reprieve. She has a soft mat laid out for him by the doors and she strokes his fur until he falls asleep some nights. Some nights she just hums a tune. He never makes a sound, but she knows that when the sky goes dark and the moon is bright, he’s looking up at it and thinking of home. And it hurts her to see him this way, because it reminds her of the truth. She can’t keep him here forever. One day, Varo will come with a letter from Lord Manderly, and she’ll pen her response, and she’ll have to tell Varo to take Ghost back with him. Might be she’ll have to take him herself. One day, she knows, this will all come to a screeching halt. If the past few years have taught her anything, it’s that nothing—nothing at all—lasts forever.

But whoa, boy. She was _not_ expecting it to be over this quickly.

She wakes up one morning nearly seven months into her exile, and Willa is standing by her bed nervously. It’s her first clue that something is wrong. Izarro is by the door, waiting for her to dress. She's cleaned and ready for another long day of doing nothing when Willa takes her hand and clutches it tightly.

“You have a visitor,” she says meaningfully, and it’s the way her eyes are blown wide that makes Sansa start.

She's not left the villa. Neither has Ghost. How the devil did the Dragon Queen find her? And how did she get here? One would think she’d have heard a dragon landing on the rooftop.

She won’t lie to herself. She doesn’t particularly like her odds now. Her stomach is churning, but she can feel the sun on her skin and it’s just like King’s Landing. Oh, what a show she had put on then. She's the greatest liar the world has ever seen. She's outwitted Joffrey, Cersei, Baelish, Ramsay, and Danielle Toff-girl-in-town. She's as wild as a winter wolf.

Fucking _woof_.

When she reaches the landing, she has a full view of the foyer. She's frozen for a moment in utter disgust, and everything that she told myself doesn’t matter starts to hurt all over again because it’s a head of solid black curls waiting by the door. He turns at the noise. Eyes lock on her. Wide, brown, sparkling. A breath of relief. Not hers. _Certainly_ not hers. His.

“Sansa,” he breathes.

_Fuck off_. She wants to say. She doesn’t, mostly because she doesn’t want to talk to him, also because she's a fucking lady.

_You are so fucking stupid_.

“Your Grace,” she says instead. _A lady’s armor is courtesy_.

“Sansa,” he says again, like he’s clinging to the way it sounds. As if it could save him.

“Welcome to Pentos, Your Grace,” she says, and it’s back. The cold. The chill. The ice. She's been away from it all for so long, she’d forgotten how to use it, but it’s all coming back to her now. Like an old dress you fish out of your closet on a quiet day. You can’t quite believe it still fits you.

He steps forward, arms outstretched, and she wants to fall into his embrace like a pig-headed little bint who never learns a thing.

_I’m a stupid girl, with stupid dreams, who never learns. _

She lets him wrap his arms around her and listens to him breathe her in deep. He holds her too tight, for too long, to let her know that there’s something else here. Something she thought she had imagined once upon a time, that she probably entertained. Dark thoughts, honestly.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” he says, and she forces a small smile as she pulls away and takes a step back.

“Your Grace musn’t be so dramatic,” she insists.

_Take what you want and leave, asshole. It’s all you ever do._

“Is this what it’s come to?” he asks, and he sounds sadder than she's ever seen him (which you should know is a real fucking achievement). “Can’t you call me Jon?”

“I wasn’t aware you still went by Jon,” she says casually as she leads him into the parlor. He follows after her like Ghost does when he knows she has a treat in my pocket. It feels familiar and impossible at once. The bastard. “Isn’t it Aegon these days?”

“I’m still Jon,” he says, and he sounds even sadder. “I’ll always be Jon.”

“Yes, I suppose old habits die hard,” she concedes, plopping herself down on a sofa and gesturing for him to take a seat. Izarro lays out a tray of tea and lemon cakes and leaves quietly. The only sound is the gentle ocean breeze coming in through the open balcony doors.

He’s watching her intently as she pours him a cup. He won’t take his with honey—he never liked the sweetness—and she's not quite certain how partial he is to lemon cakes, but she serves him both anyways. He doesn’t take his eyes off her.

“You look like a dream,” he says, and she's overcome with the urge to dump the entire plate and teapot over his stupid head.

She'll admit that she probably doesn’t look like herself. There isn’t a braid in her hair, she's in some silky thing he’s likely never seen before, she's not even wearing shoes. But she thinks he’s referring to the fact that she no longer looks like she's been forced to eat pickled fish innards, which is how she felt towards those last few bitter months in Winterhell.

Hell yeah she looks like a dream, but she's lived a nightmare.

“To what do I owe this great honor, Your Grace?” she asks pointedly. Speed this up. She has a long day of nothing to do.

“I’m…I’m here to take you home,” he says.

Awfully bold of him to assume she wants to go home.

“But I am home,” she says instead. _Not really_, but she keeps this to herself. She's hurt, and she's angry, and she's in no humor to be indulging him and encouraging him. She's tired.

“No, you _left _home,” he says.

“I had two options,” she says. “Banishment or burning. I made my choice.”

“Burning?”

“You know I never had the slightest intention of kneeling to that thing.”

“Do you think I would’ve made you kneel to her?”

“I wouldn’t dare presume to know Your Grace’s mind,” she says with a shrug as she sweetens her tea.

“Stop it,” he says.

“My king?”

“Stop that. Now,” he says, and the irritated edge creeping into his voice makes her blood sing. Gods, she's been waiting for this. She didn’t even know she needed it. Come on, come on, come on.

“I’m certain I’ve not a clue what you mean, Your Grace.”

“Stop talking to me like that,” he hisses, and she could sing.

“I’d be perfectly happy to oblige,” she says. “If Your Grace could tell me what you would prefer to hear.”

“Sansa,” he says warningly.

“My King?”

He seems for a moment as though he’s going to explode, and she picks up a lemon cake and sits back to watch the show. But he deflates like wind dying out of a sail, and she's disappointed.

“How could you leave like that?” he asks quietly, miserably, and she tucks her feet underneath her seat and has a sip of her tea.

“How could _you_?” she asks back, and his eyes meet hers.

“I had to,” he says.

“So did I.”

“She wanted me in King’s Landing with her.”

“And I wanted you in Winterfell with me,” she says back.

He’s silent now, and she busies herself with the lemon cake. It’s topped with a thick vanilla cream that makes her swoon. A light breathing from the balcony echoes in the space between them. Ghost is awake. Izarro must be feeding him.

“How can he stand it here?” Jon asks.

“He can’t,” she says. “He only likes that it’s quiet.”

“He’ll be needing to get home soon.”

“He will.”

“You as well.”

“I don’t think I’ll be leaving just yet.”

Jon sighs. “I missed you.”

“That’s kind of you to say, Your Grace.”

“Would you—would you please just call me Jon?”

“Well, I suppose we’re far enough from home now that I don’t have to worry about roasting alive for not groveling to the Crown’s satisfaction.”

“I never would have let her hurt you.”

“You don’t let a woman like her do anything. She does as she pleases. And you do as she pleases.”

“I had no choice.”

“You had every choice.”

“We needed her—”

“She’d already agreed to help,” she says, all of the nasty thoughts she’s had since speaking to Bran that day swimming in her mind, the sting of learning them just as sharp now as they had been that gray and ugly day. “You gave it away because you didn’t want it. You didn’t want what I’d given you. A kingdom, a crown, my good faith. You didn’t want any of it at all.” He opens his mouth to speak, but she leans forward now, putting her cup and saucer onto the tray. “Do you think they crowned you king because they saw that you could fight? Do you think they called you king because of your wit? You’d have died on that field with Rickon had it not been for me. And _every single lord in that room knew it_. They crowned you king because of _me_. Because I welcomed a _monster_ back into my life to _keep you safe_. Did you imagine yourself as some sort of martyr when you ran after Ramsay? You were a child waving a sword made of wood. You fought _one battle_ to set the North free. I fought an _entire war_. And I put my faith in you. And you…_you you you_ just cast it aside.”

“I really believed she’d be a good queen,” he says, and she leans back in her seat again.

“You had no proof when you made that decision,” she says. “You’re as foolish as every other man who’s ever had the distinction of disappointing me.”

“Won’t you give me a chance to make it right?” he asks. “Won’t you come home with me?”

“I’ve no place in a Westeros where I’m made to bend the knee.”

“You won’t have to.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“She’s gone, Sansa.”

She raises a brow. “Gone?”

“She’s gone. Drogon went down fighting Euron Greyjoy. She almost drowned in the time it took us to find her. The Unsullied are decimated, she’s less than two dozen Dothraki. She has less than fifty men to her name now.”

“Such a name it was,” she recalls. “At least she has her throne.”

Jon cringes. “She doesn’t.”

“Dear Gods,” she says. “Don’t tell me Euron Greyjoy is king.”

“He’s not. I am.”

She coughs up her tea. “I beg your pardon?”

“It was Varys’ idea,” Jon says, now looking truly miserable. “The other lords liked the idea. I didn’t really have much say in it, in the end.”

Against all of her irritation, she manages to feel something akin to satisfaction. “Well, isn’t that ironic? One meets their destiny on the road they take to avoid it.”

“I’m pleased to see you find my misery so amusing,” he says, some faint smile upon his lips. It fades before she can commit it to memory. “Come home, Sansa. Come home with me. I’m out of my depth in King’s Landing.”

“You’d actually welcome my counsel this time?” She asks. She has to. She has to be sure.

“I’m only a warrior,” he says. “I’m no politician. And recent experience has taught me that prowess in one doesn’t guarantee success in the other. I need you.”

She's fucked. Technically, she knew that it was all over when she saw him standing by the door. One day, she knew, this would all come to a screeching halt. If the past few years have taught her anything, it’s that nothing—nothing at all—lasts forever.

“Well, I suppose there are some decorative changes needed for the chamber of the hand anyways,” she concedes as she takes another sip of her tea.

“I had actually hoped we could put you in the western wing.”

She wrinkles her nose in confusion, but it doesn’t last long. And there it is again, that sneaking suspicion of something that she's not sure how to voice, not sure how to put quite into words. It’s as omnipresent as a shadow. “Cersei’s old chambers?”

“Well, they’re nearer to mine, and…” here Jon is quiet again. The shadow suddenly feels much realer and her stomach turns. “They are meant, customarily, to be occupied by the queen.”

She puts down her cup and sits up a tad straighter. “You’ve come for a bride.”

“No,” he says, and now that the words are out he seems a little more comfortable with them. “I’ve come here for _you_.”

He says nothing else, only watches her as his teacup steams up into the air between them. She doesn’t know what she's supposed to say, or to think, other than what she's already been thinking since the day he handed her his mug of <strike>poison</strike> ale as she sat covered with his white fur cloak before a burning fire. Because as she handed him back the mug, coughing up what felt like a kidney and half of her will to live, he looked oddly peaceful. Serene. Happy. And in the light of the fire, she thought for a moment that his eyes looked violet. And because she's stupid, too, she thought she had imagined it. But it’s back again, as he watches her in the bright sunny Pentosi morning as they have tea and lemon cakes by the beach. He’s watching her like his eyes have never left her face, and she swears to anyone who will listen that they are violet.

“I suppose it fits,” she says, because she has to say _something_, because she doesn’t know what to do with this realization that he crossed an ocean to make her his queen. She doesn’t know what to do with this power he’s placing in her hands. Not power over kingdoms and lands, but power over _him_.

_You’ve always had this power_, some small nagging voice in her head reminds her, and she recalls the lurching of her stomach when his eyes caught violet in that fire, and she realizes that the nagging voice is right. Only now she feels fucking stupid herself, because here she is doing the one thing she swore she’d never do again: put her faith in Jon fucking Snow.

Men are fucking stupid, and this man, in particular, has always seemed particularly so. What does that make her, then?

“It does,” he agrees.

“Good will between the North and the South.”

“Aye.”

“You won’t last a minute in King’s Landing.”

“Not a second.”

“Politically, it makes sense.”

“I wouldn’t care if it didn’t,” Jon says.

And he’s doing it again, throwing out words like they mean nothing when they’re reminding her, shockingly so, of how much clout she has. But she thought she had clout before, when she watched the Knights of the Vale overpower banners of flayed men. She thought she had earned the worth of her words. Stupid men take things for granted, and she cannot be taken for granted again.

“And I suppose this manse is always going to be here if it doesn’t work out,” she says, and he has to swallow before he nods.

“I’ll be sure you never need it.”

She sighs now, looking down at her teacup, watching the liquid swirl around inside. There’s nothing left to say, she supposes. Oh, wait. Yes there is.

“I never want to see her again,” she says firmly, and his nod is so quick that there isn’t a doubt in her mind that he’s still in her corner.

“You’ll never have to look at her again,” he promises her. “I’ll destroy anyone who tries to make you kneel.” And there’s a way he goes about making this promise that makes her think he might actually manage to keep it. She's not sure what it is exactly, but it leaves her feeling like she's eaten up with something, herself. Could it be…hope?

“Careful,” she warns him. “I mean to hold you to your word.”

His eyes are violet again as he comes around to her seat, catches her hand in his and _kneels._ “A king is only as good as his word,” he says, brushing his lips across her knuckle. “And his queen.”

-_end_-


End file.
